Shot over the course of three years while Zoe Leonard was living in extremely remote part of Alaska (adjacent to the Yukon territory), these six photographs show animals that Leonard hunted and butchered herself and with friends: a bear, a moose, a beaver, a duck.   They document a mode of subsistence living defined by hunting for one’s own food, skinning and butchering animals, and using every part of the body.  Astonishingly anti-picturesque, they are seminal works in Leonard's long exploration of the relationships between photography and images of nature. As Leonard explains: "In 1994, I started spending time in Alaska.  The first time, I stayed six months. I returned in 1995 and lived up there alone for a year and a half in Eagle, a small village on the Yukon River.  I got interested in the idea of subsistence - of living more directly from my own labor. I heated with wood, hauled my own water, and gathered and grew some of my food. Gradually, my experiences there seeped into my work. "At first, I had no intention of taking any pictures while in Alaska, but eventually I began dealing with the new imagery that surrounded me. The pictures that resulted were different from anything I had dealt with before, such as the wax anatomical models or the fashion-show pictures. But I realized that my perspective had accompanied me. I had shifted from examining historical images of women to looking at the land around me, but I retained my concern with analyzing and understanding our culture, our society. "Contrary to my expectations, Alaska both expanded and clarified my politics. I began to grasp the connections between social issues in New York and land-use issues in Alaska. For instance, the economic link between the Alaska oil pipeline and the urban consumer. It became possible at a private level for me to think differently about what I consume. "I was afraid at first that I would have a hard time making art in Alaska. What I found was the opposite. I was surrounded by the complexity of nature, and I began thinking about our "progress" as a people, about the choices we have made. I thought a lot about hunting, about our predatory nature. No one wants to admit they're a predator, but it's impossible to find someone who doesn't sanction killing on some level - for food, or for political or moral reasons. Somehow we no longer really view ourselves as part of the food chain. What we eat is prepackaged and delivered to us. Our shit disappears when we flush the toilet. "While in Eagle, I got a rifle and began to hunt a little - small game, birds, and ducks. I also helped friends deal with their moose and bear. After a while, I began the series of 'hunting' pictures. "In Alaska, I began to understand what it is to haul your own water. I felt like I understood economics and economy for the first time, the relationship of my labor to my comfort. My labor to my survival. I had to haul this many gallons of water to put this much water in my body, and I had to hunt this animal and skin it to feed my body." Read more.